


And Every Bright Neon Sign Turned into Stars

by Calyps0



Category: The Blacklist (US TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Gun Violence, Memory Alteration, Memory Loss, Mentions of Suicide, Suicidal Ideation, Suicide Pact, i just realized i forgot to tag for angst, memory manipulation, red is NOT nice, this fic is ANGST only
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-06
Updated: 2020-12-06
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:28:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27905968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Calyps0/pseuds/Calyps0
Summary: “What do you want?" he asks. "For me to have ended my life with yours, even though you weren’t really gone?”“Yes,” she says, unconvincingly. “Because then I would have known that you cared.”---(Title stolen from The World We Knew (Over and Over) by Frank Sinatra. I personally prefer the Josh Groban version, though; I think it suits the vibe a bit better.
Relationships: Elizabeth Keen & Raymond Reddington, Elizabeth Keen/Raymond Reddington
Comments: 2
Kudos: 34





	And Every Bright Neon Sign Turned into Stars

It starts out with a question.

She’s stomped over here, at wit’s end—which admittedly happens more often than not, these days—armed only with a request for the truth. Like he will deliver it to her, silver-plattered and christened, if only she just asks one more time.

He wonders if she knows the definition of _insanity_. He wonders if perhaps he should consult it more often.

“Elizabeth,” he starts sternly, already jaded. Or rather, _still._ His temples ache. He longs for the warmed-sheet somnolence of his youth, for the artlessness and _un_ -complication of his boyhood years.

Except she is Elizabeth— _his_ Elizabeth—and she still has the power to surprise him. Surprise in her care—her name on his lips and her bullet’s fire, as if he had somehow summoned her with a wish. Surprise in her strength while the bodies of her father—and then her husband—still cooled. Surprise in her cruelty, at her turbulent yet unapologetic expression aimed at him through ebon tinted windows.

(Perhaps he’ll get that apology yet.)

“No,” she says, quietly now, and ignores his raised eyebrow. “Not THE truth,” she clarifies. “I’m not masochistic enough to keep begging for it. Just—”

She collapses indelicately into the couch beside him, buries her face in her hands. Her nails are bitten down to the quick—ten assiduous, red-limned half-circles.

She looks small on his couch. He remembers her on the day he saw her again, freshly-covered highlights and the sharp unrepentance of a pen in his neck, and wonders what happened to the vibrancy that had radiated out of her. Winces when he realizes that _he_ had been its dimmer.

(Perhaps an apology on his part is overdue as well.)

When she speaks again, her voice is muffled behind her hands, “Tell me _something_ that’s true. About you. I don’t care what it is. Just make it true.”

His lips part. He’s shocked to silence, and then stunned doubly by the comprehensiveness of it. It makes his ears _ring._

It’s not such an odd request, he realizes belatedly. Certainly—if nothing else—within his power to grant. Although he immediately recognizes it for what it is—not a surrender, but a delay. Not this truth—not today, but _someday._

How many truths, he wonders, would she trade to give up on the last? A hundred? A thousand? One every day, for the rest of his days? Would she demand them beyond the dirt that will someday separate them, drink them from the hollow of his bones?

Before, he would have answered with a resolute _no_. it would have been out of the question. But now— _now_ they have _Cuba_ between them, and the distance on the couch seems as unbridgeable as those miles had been—larger than space, longer than time.

They breathe together for one of these interludes, one that not even their shared past can seem to puncture, as runny and delicate as the albumen of an egg. It’s long enough that eventually she shakes her head, moves to stand. She stretches parabolically, with the smooth, even motions he recognizes from her early days at Quantico. Efficiency, he recognizes. Endurance. There is necessity in her every move these days, like she is tiptoeing to the cordon of survival, and can step no further. She dons her jacket, checks and double-checks the laces on her boots. When she has re-knotted them a third time, she straightens. The look she gives him is hard, and her mouth is a bracing, disappointed line.

He waits until she turns to leave before murmuring softly, “My favorite color is blue.”

She spins back around. “What?”

He clears his throat. His mouth is suddenly dry. “My favorite color,” he repeats weakly, “It’s blue.”

She stares. Her expression hasn’t changed. “Really?” she breathes.

“Really,” he says, with the unflinching seriousness of gravity.

She tilts her head—he knows where she got that from, and tallies another thing he has to apologize for—and her brow turns assessing, solemn. Like she’s trying to determine whether or not to believe him, which he finds more than a little absurd. After all, how could it be false? It would have been any color her eyes happened to be.

But they happen to be blue.

Finally, she nods, and he makes sure not to miss the faint upturn of her lips before the closed door hides her from view. He feels a brief but _sparkling_ stab of jealousy at the front stoop for witnessing her smile, a disquieting, bitter _hatred_ at the night for hiding it from him. How much power he has, he reflects, if it takes only this to make her happy.

How much power _she_ has, then, if it is only this happiness that _undoes_ him.

***

The following weeks bear the same curiosity—and indefatigable caseload—and so more often than not he finds her on his couch or barstool, his drink in her hand, his words in her ear, in the dwindling moonlit hours between night and day.

She swallows down each one, greedily. He feels rather like she is trying to piece together all the things that make him up, and their hours together start to resemble a rather tenuous—yet utterly devout—game of twenty questions. The truths feel the height of indulgence.

 _“My favorite season,”_ he tells her one night when her skin is pink with cold, _“is winter.”_

Her cheeks bulge with greasy corner-store takeout when he confides, _“I don’t like Brussels sprouts.”_

On the anniversary of Sam’s birthday he tells her, _“My father gave me a silver dollar when I turned ten.”_

When the self-hatred swarms and he stares at the apartment window and feels like flying, he rasps, _“My first bicycle was green.”_

When the mania resettles into his bones and the compulsion fades, he admits, _“I failed my first driver’s test.”_

She likes to hear about his family the most, and when he realizes it is not to parse or dissect but simply to listen, he obliges.

 _“The first story my mother read to me,”_ he says when they watch blurrily over Agnes under the cover of stars, _“was Rumpelstiltskin.”_

She gasps when he declares, _“I learned how to swim by getting thrown off a pier.”_

She bites her lip when he whispers, _“When I die, I hope it is not with as many regrets as I have now.”_

Once—when he has let his mask slip off his chin but has not yet marshaled the strength to replace it—he confesses, _“You’re the reason I get up in the morning.”_

For some reason, she frowns at this.

The next time he says simply, _“I’m sorry.”_

(This might be the truest thing he’s said.)

And then one day _—one day_ she does not rise. It is far past the time she usually leaves, the time when it is so dark it starts to get light, that _she_ poses a question instead.

Her eyes are clear and bright when she turns to him on the couch and asks seriously, “Will you kill me if I find out who you are?

He looks at her for a long second, taken aback. Guilt immediately smites his heart. How could he have done this, make her believe that that is something he could possibly—

“No,” he says. And then more strongly, _“No._ Elizabeth, look at me.”

She does, lifting her chin in defiance.

His chest is tight enough that he loosens his tie, figuring the late hour is justification enough. “Of all the things I am capable of,” he says evenly, “that is not one of them.”

The look she gives him is twisted, contrite. “Are you angry that I don’t believe you?”

“No.”

She purses her lips. “Don’t you _want_ me to believe you?”

“Elizabeth, this isn’t something I can prove to you.”

She turns to face forward again. “I _will_ find out, you know.”

He sighs. “I give you permission to try. The rest is up to me.”

“Then you might as well do it, you know. Because I won’t stop until I do.”

He waves a flippant hand. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“No, I’m serious. Here. Do it.”

Her hand is at her waist in a second; her gun is in his fist the next. Two blinks. She curls her own fingers around his, presses the tip of the barrel firmly against her chest. His palm is filled with sharp gunmetal and her soft pink skin.

“ _Elizabeth_ ,” he growls dangerously, “What are you doing?”

“Proving a point.”

“Elizabeth, do _not_ do this _._ ” He doesn’t like the rules of this game. It forces himself to give himself away either way. A frictionless test, where indecision means death.

She shakes her head, unblinking, her eyes a little glassy. “Stop me.”

He doesn’t have time to think. She squeezes down on the trigger over his fingers just as his other hand slips between the gun and her chest.

The shot _cracks_ through the air.

Their eyes both widen at the sound, nearly deafening in the small space. His heartbeat is a friable, tattooing thing as he opens his palm to reveal the coin he’s slid to block the bullet—a shining silver dollar. He exhales a shuddering sigh of relief—

—until he realizes with a stab of blistering fury that it _isn’t_ dented. The _little—_

He takes her wrist in an iron grip and snarls, “How _dare_ you?”

Her eyes glitter with triumph. “I needed to be sure.”

He flips the safety back on to give his hands something other to do than _shake_ her. “How dare you be so _dismissive_ of your life when all I’ve done is tried to preserve it!” She has no _right_ to toy with him like this—not now, not after Cuba. Her life belongs to him as much as it is does her.

But she snarls right back. “ _This_ is why! I’m not a person to you anymore! I’m a _sunk cost,_ one of your _business transactions!_ You feel you’ve already expended this much effort into keeping me alive, so you might as well keep going, right?”

He grits his teeth, crunching on a back molar. “You _know_ that’s not true,” he hisses.

She huffs. “No, I _don’t_. When have you ever given me a reason to think I’m worth anything more to you than a heartbeat?”

His eye twitches. “Elizabeth—”

“Was it better?”

He makes himself lower his voice. “What?”

“When I was in a coma. Hell, you probably _loved_ that,” she spits. “Having a precious doll you could watch at all times. That’s what you want, isn’t it? You want to watch my heartbeat on a monitor, give yourself a nice pat on the back for personally maintaining each one. You think I’m just a stupid, silly girl. Everything I do each day—every time I risk my life—I’m just impeding y _our_ progress. Your _accomplishment._ ”

He should tell her she isn’t stupid. That he doesn’t see her as a doll, or a thing he has to control.

And yet, he has underestimated their power to wound one another. “It wouldn’t hurt you to have a _fraction_ of regard for your life,” he says petulantly.

She huffs. “You know what? I think I’d prefer it if you _could_ kill me. Then I would be assured you weren’t keeping me alive based on your own ego alone.”

“I’m not,” he says hoarsely.

She snorts. “How do I know that?”

He closes his eyes. “Because when I held your hand in the ambulance,” he says shakily, “that was my death knell.”

Her lips part. “What are you _talking_ about?”

He can’t meet her eyes when he says, “If you had truly been gone, I would have gone with you.”

She replies coldly, “If that were true, you would be dead right now.”

“Funnily enough,” he sneers back, “I had been _duped_.”

She narrows her eyes. “How long did it take you to find out?”

He thinks of her hand in the ambulance, his legs falling out from underneath him. The long days with Dom—how buttermilk was not as sour as his loss, how a piano with a missing key was not as arrhythmic as the stuttering _thump-thump-a-thump_ of his weakened heart. He thinks of the cavern in his soul, and how nothing would have filled it but _her._ The anger fades, replaced by grief.

“Too long,” he says out loud.

She frowns. “Not long enough, apparently. I must not mean as much to you as I thought.”

This vindictiveness surprises him. “Don’t be like that.”

“Hey, you’re the one that said ‘death knell,’ not me.”

He snorts. This is almost _too_ ridiculous. “What do you want? For me to have ended my life with yours, even though you weren’t really gone?”

“Yes,” she says, unconvincingly. “Because then I would have known that you cared.”

“Elizabeth,” he says patiently, feeling vaguely unhinged, “I can’t go back in time and kill myself just to prove how much you mean to me.”

She doesn’t argue with this. He’s grateful. He’s not sure what else he could have said to convince her.

But she’s still grappling with the _other_ things he’s told her—or rather, let _slip._ “So you won’t kill me,” she confirms, “and you’ll do anything to preserve my life, but you _can_ live without me.”

“That wasn’t living. There’s a difference.”

“Well, lucky for you, I’ll never know that difference. I can’t remember a time when you haven’t taken someone away from me.”

(Distantly, he registers her use of the word _remember._ It won’t be long now.)

“You know,” she continues idly, “some people might ask why I continue to associate with you. But they don’t know that there’s no place on earth I can go to be rid of you. I know because I’ve tried. The only way out is to be dead—really dead—and that’s the only thing I can’t do. _Won’t_ do.” She shakes her head. “I won’t do that to Agnes.” She points an arresting finger at him. “ _She_ is the reason I live, not you. Understand that. It is not your accomplishment. It is _her_ alone that keeps me alive.”

He swallows. “I understand,” he says.

“Good.”

She leans comfortably, blows out a long breath. “What _will_ you do when I found out?”

He shakes his head mutely. “I won’t hurt you,” he promises unsteadily. That is all he can promise now.

“Well,” she gestures nebulously, “that’s something, I suppose.” She props her chin on her knuckles contemplatively. “Do you think I would I kill you?”

He recalls the look he’s seen in her eyes countless times. Her efficient takedowns in the field. Two shots, just like the academy’s guidelines. And he doesn’t have to imagine that gaze pierced on him because he’s seen it before.

“Probably,” he says honestly.

She lets out a low whistle. “That bad, huh?”

He gives her a look. “If it wasn’t, do you think I would have gone to these lengths to hide it from you?”

“I suppose not.” She fiddles with her cuff, at the Y-shaped scar he knows hides underneath. “So you won’t let me die. But you won’t let me live without you, either.”

He swallows. He wants to tell her she’s wrong. But it’s too late. She reads his expression perfectly. Coaxial, that’s what they are. Lock-stepped. “So you—in all your infinite wisdom and power—have decided that for the rest of our lives, we’re tied together.”

“You deserve a long, full life,” he protests. It sounds weak even to his own ears.

She’s already shaking her head. “You said you didn’t lie to me,” she says quietly. “Don’t start now.”

She sits contemplatively for a little bit. Very, very softly, she says, “I could do it, you know. In the end.”

He’s never been able to stave off his morbid curiosity. “When?” he asks.

“When Agnes is older, I think,” she says, in a prayerful, conversational tone like she is discussing something far less consequential than a suicide pact.

He tries halfheartedly to come up with a problem with this plan. Predictably, he fails. “How would you do it?” he asks.

She is thoughtful for a moment. Then she inhales, as if preparing herself to fall from a great height. When she rises from the couch, she holds out a convivial hand. He takes it, lets her draw him to standing.

In her heeled boots they’re nearly perfectly eye-to-eye. He could broach the space between them—touch her hair, her face, the eyelashes fanned out against her cheeks. He doesn’t. Instead he forces himself to look into her eyes, at the sea of blue he lost himself in the day they met.

“I think it would have to be a day like this one. You and me, at your safe house. After a case.”

He hums reflectively. “No audience?” he asks.

“No. I wouldn’t want to put anyone else through that.”

For some reason, this amuses him. “Very magnanimous of you,” he says.

“Don’t be like that.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You’re not.”

“Alright, I’m not.”

“Quiet, you’re making me lose my train of thought.”

“Apologies, please continue.”

She stares at him—a candid, assessing stare, something undisturbed by the world outside. Whatever she searches for in his eyes, she finds.

“I think—” she says, “I think I’d start by holding you. Like this.” She tugs him close to her, tucked against her front, in a sort of mock embrace. Her head pillowed on his shoulder, her hands at his back. He slings his arms around her hips, inhales the perfume peppered at her pulse point. She’s warm against his chest.

“Then what?” he prompts unnecessarily, his voice muffled against her sweater. This conversation has gone so many different ways he can predict her next words before she says them.

She nods her chin fuzzily. “I think it would be best if we listened to something. You’re the music expert. Do you have a suggestion?”

 _Too many to count,_ he thinks dizzily. And anyway, he can’t think when his lungs are filling with _her_. “You pick,” he says into her hair.

It takes her a moment to decide. “The Anniversary Waltz,” she says finally, “In honor of Sam.”

This never ceases to choke him up. “A fine choice,” he says softly, to hide the quaver in his voice. In a sudden fit of whimsy, he starts a gentle swaying waltz, and she rocks unsteadily with him. She laughs when he twirls her, and then he does it again, just to commit the sound to memory.

When she’s firmly pressed back against him, she murmurs, “I don’t think there should be any ceremony. Any long recitations. I think it should be quick.”

“Whatever you like,” he agrees deeply.

“Maybe—maybe it should be raining? Or is that too melodramatic?”

He imagines raindrops falling like tears on the windowsill. “I’ve never been one to shy away from melodrama.”

She nods. “Ok, I’ll pick a day when it’s raining. Mark your calendar for an April in the future.”

“Ah, I’ll miss the blooming cacti in the Sonoran desert. Their flowers are _spectacular_ in May.”

“That’s ok. Just make sure you see them this year. So you’ll remember for when we do this.”

“Alright. What else?”

“I think that’s it. Nothing too complicated. We’ve made enough of a mess of our lives as it is.”

He chuckles. The sound is obtrusive in the space between them. “So you’d—you’d do it, then,” he says, sobering.

“Yeah.”

“How?”

“I suppose I’d do this.” Her hands slide down his back to his hips, grip the gun he’s slid into his waistband. Suddenly he feels cold steel against his spine, through the fabric of his suit. He inhales sharply. It is pointed straight toward her, through him.

“Or maybe it would be better if you faced away from me?” she muses, and moves to turn his shoulder with her other hand.

“No,” he says, stilling her. “This is best. That way, neither of us has to look.”

She nods agreeably, and unclicks the safety. The barrel is square between his shoulder blades. He imagines the bullet’s trajectory—straight through his chest and into hers. Two clean wounds.

Her voice drops so softly he has to strain to hear her. “And then you’d tell me your secret,” she says, stubborn to the bitter end. He wouldn’t have expected anything less.

“Would you tell me one, too?” he can’t help but ask.

“Yes,” she says immediately.

Despite the compromising position, he perks up. “What kind of secret?”

She inhales. He can feel the rise of her ribs against his own. “I suppose I could tell you who _I_ really am. It would only be fair.”

He nods against her shoulder. “Then what?” he prompts. His voice is barely a whisper.

“And then—I suppose I’d have to pull the trigger,” she says. He closes his eyes against the imagined bite, but it doesn’t come.

When he opens them again she has pulled back a bit, and she is staring back at him amusedly, like she is wondering if he thought she would really do it. He wants to smirk back at her, but his muscles don’t seem to be working. 

“No countdown?” he confirms instead.

“No,” she whispers back, gravely. “No second guessing.”

“Okay,” he agrees. They are silent for a moment, mourning their future selves. It is surreal to plan his own murder, deepened further by the fact that the murder weapon is mere inches away, already in her hand. He wonders briefly—like he always does—how many rounds he will use up before then. Wonders where the bullet that will take their lives is in the world right now. Already in a box in his safe house? Or is it still unmined metal?

“What happens next?” he asks after a suitable pause.

“We’d fall,” she says simply.

He registers distantly the sound of clicking—her reengaging the safety, the gun falling to the floor. She lowers herself slowly, bringing him with her, her fingers gripping the fabric of his suit jacket.

When they are both kneeling, she leans sideways. He leans with her, in a sort of strange slow motion, so that they both end up lying on their sides, facing each other on the dusty safe house floor. The parody is nothing like the velocity of violence, the suddenness of death. It is all dance, all movement. His heart is still beating to the adrenaline of survival, false as it was. He’s certain she can feel the jump of his Adam’s apple when he swallows, the beat of his pulse in his neck against her chin. She’s still got her arms slung loosely around his neck, and her voice sounds wet when she says, “I hope Agnes doesn’t take it too hard.”

“She’ll want for nothing,” he promises immediately.

She sniffles and nods into his collar. “The task force will find us, probably.”

He chuckles, the sound rumbling against her chest when he says, “Ah, what I would give to see the look on Harold’s face. Or Donald’s. You know how much he wanted to be the one to do me in.”

“No,” she objects sharply. “Only _I_ get that honor.”

“Only you,” he promises.

She nods, satisfied. There’s nothing else to add. “Anyway, that’s what I’d do.”

“I look forward to it.” He shuffles his nose into her shoulder. She runs her fingers parenthetically along his lapels. Somehow, their legs have gotten tangled together.

He doesn’t tell her that he will dream of that day. How he will get a thrill in his spine every April, how he will feel his heart beat with anticipation each time it rains.

She presses her lips to his neck. Against his skin, she mouths, “You know, I could blame you for a lot of things.”

He cannot stifle the grin that tugs at his lips. “You do, last time I checked.”

“But this isn’t one of them.”

“What?”

“This life.”

His grin fades. “You should.” He tilts her chin up, makes her meet his eye. “Elizabeth, you _should._ I told you when we met that I was going to make you famous. But I failed to consider your feelings. You didn’t need to be famous. You deserved a normal life.”

“No, that’s just it. _I didn’t_.”

He blinks, nonplussed. “Of course you did.”

This is the kind of conversation that should probably be executed over a table, spread over the unprejudice of modern lines and varnished lucite. Instead, he’s lying on his side in a rumpled suit, feet tangled up with the woman who has just declared her intent to kill him. He finds very much he’d rather be nowhere else.

“I made a choice when I was little to pick up that gun. And whether I knew it or not, that put me on a different path. That was _my_ choice, not yours. _I’m_ the one who has to live with the consequences.”

He thinks of how she was brought into this world—a newborn with a target on her back. He mourns the childhood she might have had, if there was never a gun to pick up in the first place.

Still, he thinks, _still._ “You were only a child.”

“And a murderer,” she says heavily.

“If Agnes had done what you did, would you want _her_ to punish herself for the rest of her life?”

“That’s not the same thing.”

“Of course it is.”

She puffs out a disbelieving breath.

“Elizabeth, it _is._ You’re allowed to forgive yourself.”

“Oh, like you forgive yourself for the things you’ve done?”

He inhales sharply, thrown a little off-kilter. “My sins are far greater than yours will ever be.”

She grins, and it’s a little wild, a little ragged around the edges. “Don’t bet on that,” she smirks. “You haven’t asked me which high-ranking government official I’m planning on assassinating next.”

He can’t stifle the unattractive snort that comes out of his throat. “I’m too old to go on the run again. You’d better start buddying up to another criminal on the FBI’s most wanted list.”

“Ooh, maybe I’ll pick one with a six-pack.”

“Elizabeth!”

“Kidding! It’s just—you know. You can’t blame yourself for everything. I mean, if I had even _half_ as much guilt as you carry around every day, I know I’d have to let some of it go.”

“I never said I set a good example,” he says wryly.

“Baby steps,” she says. She loosens her grip around him to lie on her back on the floor. He follows suit, but keeps their hands entangled on his chest. Her hand burrows under his loosened collar, so it rests above his heart, skin to skin.

She props her head on one arm, looking askance at him. “You know,” she confesses, “I think part of the reason I kept Tom around is because he _understood_. He had his delusions about a family and a dog and a white picket fence, but that was all they were. _Delusions_. And he and I knew that. We knew we were just holding onto an impossible dream. But he understood the dangers of this life. The truth is, I can’t give Agnes a normal father, because I wouldn’t know what to do with him.”

He chews his cheek. “I could hire someone else to follow you, if you like.”

She half-sits and smacks his shoulder. “Red!”

He smothers his surprise at her jocular mood by adding, with false bravado, “No promises he’ll fall head over heels for you, though.”

She laughs. “You would really do that for me?”

The way she’s leaning over him, the ends of her hair brush his face. They tickle. He swallows. “If you wanted me to.”

She shakes her head. Then snorts. “I never knew you fancied yourself such a matchmaker.”

“Ah,” he grins, “I never told you about my seventh grade dance. You see—”

“Nope,” she says, and suddenly her palm is over his mouth. “Stay here with me.”

He blinks. “Ok,” he relents. She doesn’t move her palm for a moment and he takes the opportunity to press a kiss to it.

She smiles.

Of course, she doesn’t know how many Aprils it has rained. She doesn’t know how many waltzes she’s given him. She doesn’t know how many times she’s pressed a gun to his back, only for him to slip a needle into her neck and make her forget all over again.

If she did, she wouldn’t smile.

She makes a noise that in a different setting might have been a laugh. “Can I tell you something?”

“Mmm.”

“Sometimes, I wish you had never come into my life.”

“I’ve wished that, too,” he admits. He traces an idle pattern down the arm of her blouse.

What _if_ they had never met? Or, better yet, if the circumstances were different? Sometimes he allows himself the blue-sky fantasy of her a little older, him a little younger, of them meeting someplace innocuous—growing up together, even. Trading glossy four-by-sixes on picture day, hiding in the grass beneath rusted bleachers, dancing in a perfumed gymnasium, all sore feet and sweaty suit jackets and no one to chase them but time.

“No, you haven’t,” she says, in a body born three decades too late.

“I _have,”_ he insists. “I wish you didn’t have to suffer.”

“Red, even If you hadn’t made me remember, I still would have shot my father. It happened whether you like it or not. I shot the attorney general, too. No one made me do that. Well,” she amends, “I suppose I did it for you. So you can blame it on yourself, if you like. If it makes you feel better.”

He doesn’t return her cheeky grin. He never smiles when he says, “I wish I could undo what has already been done.” What happens next doesn’t bring him any joy.

As if he had revealed some precious secret, her eyes go very, very wide, pupils blown out into a thick, dark ring. They almost completely cover the pools of blue.

“But you _can_ ,” she says, and for the first time in the conversation, her voice sounds different. The resignation has left her, replaced by a blinding, chimeric hope. Her eyes are alight with electricity—like nighttime static bursts, only visible under soft blankets and charged hands. It takes his breath away.

In his head, he counts the seconds until she asks something impossible.

(But it doesn’t matter. He is no longer a man, and he can make the impossible happen.)

“What do you mean?” he says lightly, sticking to the script.

“You _can_ undo what’s been done. At least in my mind.” She leans further over him now, until she is all he can see. His sun, his horizon, his moonlight.

“I don’t understand,” he lies. Of course he understands. And if he didn’t have to keep all her _untruths_ straight he’d do the same thing to himself.

(That’s a lie, too. He values control far too much.)

“You could—you could _make_ me forget. You have. With the memory doctor. Doctor—”

He sits up a little, feigning indignation. “Don’t even _think_ about it.”

 _“Raymond,_ please,” she says.

Oh, how he _loves_ this. He is a bastard, the worst man on earth, and yet he would give _anything—_ do this a hundred times, a million times, live forever, erase her memories _forever_ —if only for this pleading, wide-eyed second where she says his name.

“Lizzie,” he lets himself call her, “it’s too dangerous.”

She pins him with a look. “More dangerous than me taking your life?”

“That’s not the same thing.”

“Where have I heard that before?”

_“Lizzie.”_

“Raymond. For me.”

He rests his hand heavily on hers. “What do you want to forget?”

“When I find out your name, make me forget it. Promise me that.”

His lips part. This is one of her more ridiculous requests, and it never fails to make him feel vaguely unmoored. He unsticks his tongue from the roof of his mouth. “Why don’t you just stop?” he asks gently.

“Why don’t _you_ just tell me?” she counters.

He is so, _so_ tired. He loves her so much he’ll turn her brain into jelly before he puts lead into her belly. He’ll twist ever memory into an unbreakable puzzle before he feels her cold fingers in his again. He will erase away _years_ of her life so he doesn’t have to relive his dry cracked lips on her eyelids, so cold and stiff she’d felt like stone.

He could remove this memory from himself, if he wished. But he doesn’t, because it is the very least in punishment he could take for what he is about to do.

“Alright,” he says softly. “I’ll make you forget.”

She blinks. Her eyes are open in wonder, as if she will _thank_ him for what he does to her. And she will. She already has.

“You promise?”

“Yes,” he says, “I promise.” The words are familiar on his tongue. He prepares to say them again tomorrow.

An even nine hundred times, he tallies—nine hundred lies, nine hundred sorrows.

They’ll make it to a thousand truths yet.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading my nonsense <3


End file.
